Orioles' Big Bird E-Book

Peter Schmuck

• Herausgeber: anna ruggieri
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Follows the stunning career of Mark Trumbo, baseball star. An American former professional baseball outfielder and first baseman. He played in Major League Baseball for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Arizona Diamondbacks, Seattle Mariners, and Baltimore Orioles. Trumbo was an All-Star in 2012 and 2016.

Leseprobe

Orioles’ Big Bird

Mark Trumbo speaks softly, but carries a big stick

By Peter Schmuck

BACK STORY PUBLISHING, LLC

www.backstorypublishing.com

Orioles’ Big Bird

Mark Trumbo speaks softly, but carries a big stick

by Peter Schmuck

Copyright © 2018 by Back Story Publishing, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or stored in any printed, mechanical, or electronic form, or distributed or held or stored for distribution by any physical or electronic means, without written permission from Back Story Publishing. Please respect the rights of authors and publishers, and refrain from piracy of copyrighted materials. Thank you.

ISBN: 978-0-9993967-7-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018951981

Paperback editions printed in the United States of America.

For information on quantity discounts or special editions to be used for educational programs, fundraising, premiums, or sales promotions, please inquire via electronic mail at [email protected], or write to Back Story Publishing, Post Office Box 2580, Rancho Mirage, California 92270 USA.

News media inquiries may be directed [email protected].

Credits

Cover and back cover photographs by Gary Ambrose,copyright © Back Story Publishing, LLC

Designer: Stuart Funk

Back Story Publishing Editorial Director: Ellen Alperstein

eBook by ePubMATIC.com

www.BackStoryPublishing.com

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

Yankee Stadium, September 2016

CHAPTER 2

The Pee Wee With Power

CHAPTER 3

Little Angel With the Big Arm

CHAPTER 4

The Little Leaguer Goes Long

CHAPTER 5

Hearing the Beat of the Drum

CHAPTER 6

Heaven on the Mound at Angel Stadium

CHAPTER 7

The Pros Take Aim

CHAPTER 8

A Scholarship or a Paycheck?

CHAPTER 9

A Crushing Blow

CHAPTER 10

Welcome to Utah

CHAPTER 11

Back to Baseball School

CHAPTER 12

Figuring Out Failure

CHAPTER 13

A Detour to the Dominican Republic

CHAPTER 14

On Wings of an Angel

CHAPTER 15

The Show Stoppers

CHAPTER 16

Leading With His Heart

CHAPTER 17

Sun, Rain, and a Swing Change

CHAPTER 18

The Oriole Soars Into Home Run History

AFTERWORD

MARK TRUMBO — BY THE NUMBERS

GLOSSARY OF BASEBALL TERMS

INTRODUCTION

Albert Einstein dropped out of school when he was 15. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. Walt Disney was fired from his first job because his boss thought he had no imagination.

Even if people call you the smartest person in the world, even if you’re the best basketball player ever, even if you’re the guy who invented Mickey Mouse, sometimes you fail.

This book is about Mark Trumbo. He’s a baseball player who hit more home runs in 2016 than any other major league player. He’s not as well-known as the legendary Babe Ruth or even his former Baltimore Orioles’ teammate, Manny Machado, but he has reached the top of a difficult game.

If you don’t know who he is, why should you read about him? Because, like a lot of famous and successful people, Mark has known failure. And that makes a good story.

He was born with talent, and has worked hard since he was 6 years old to make the most of it. But talent and hard work don’t always give you a clear path to glory. Sometimes, bad things happen that you can’t control, and how you deal with them can help or hurt you. How you deal with them makes you the person you become.

I have been a sportswriter for many years. I have traveled all over the United States, and have gotten to know some of America’s best athletes. They all have different stories about how they got to the top of their sports. I wanted to tell Mark’s story because, even if you don’t know anything about baseball, you can see how someone with a dream found a way around the things that made it hard to come true. Whether your dream is playing centerfield for the New York Yankees, or being the best science teacher ever, you will always find adventure along the way.

Like Mark.

Peter Schmuck

GARY AMBROSE

CHAPTER 1

Yankee Stadium, September 2016

On the last Friday night of the regular baseball season, Yankee Stadium was packed with loud New Yorkers. It was their last chance to see their beloved team play this year. The Yankees were out of the playoffs, and, after Sunday, they were headed for the offseason.

Not so for their opponents in this three-game series. The visiting Baltimore Orioles were hanging on to the last spot in the playoffs. To get into the best position, they had to win here, right next to the original stadium known as “The House that Ruth Built.” That nickname for the former Yankee Stadium was a tribute to Babe Ruth. He was often called the game’s best player, and he was the first really famous one. For nearly 40 years, Ruth held the record for most home runs in a career — 714. For almost that long, he also held the single-season home run record — 60.

Now, almost 70 years after Babe Ruth died, one Orioles’ player had more home runs this season than any other major leaguer — Mark Trumbo. So far in this game, he had made outs in his first two at-bats, the first on a ground ball, the second on a fly. Now, in the fifth inning, it was his turn again to hit. He walked to home plate, scuffed the dirt with his cleats, and took a couple of practice swings. He looked out into the vast outfield. It was like an ocean of green under the bright stadium lights.

Mark was a long way from Southern California, where he grew up watching the local major league team, the California Angels, play in a stadium 15 minutes from his house. Now, standing at home plate in Yankee Stadium, it was almost 25 years since Mark’s dad had taken him into the backyard, handed him a tiny bat, and taught him how to hit a baseball. Now, that little boy had become a man with a chance to make history.

The road to the major leagues hadn’t been easy for Mark to travel. By the time he was 8, his baseball talent was clear to anyone who saw him play. But after high school, a major injury had forced him to learn a new position, had forced him to move through years of minor league baseball before he ever got here, to what the players call “The Show.” Now, he was a star, the home run champion for 2016. He had hit so many homers that year, the Orioles’ radio announcer started calling them “Trumbombs.”

The pitcher got the signal from the catcher. Mark went into his stance and stared at the mound. Was the pitcher going to throw a fastball? Curveball? Slider? Would Mark be able to see it leave the pitcher’s hand in time to read it?

He would. He did. The Yankees pitcher threw a slider that Mark saw coming. He swung hard and connected. The crack of the bat smacking the ball made the crowd groan. It sailed over the wall in left field for a 2-run homer. For Mark, it was Number 47 for the year.

CHAPTER 2

The Pee Wee With Power

If you like to play baseball, or watch other people play, you want to be in Orange County, California. Just south of Los Angeles, it’s a warm-weather region that grows good players like Colorado grows mountains.

In this part of Southern California, baseball is played at a high level at every level, from Little League to high school to college to Major League Baseball (MLB).

Mark Trumbo was born in 1986. He grew up in Villa Park, in Orange County, and from the ages of 6 to 11, he played in Villa Park Little League. In high school, he played with and against other boys who would also grow up to play big league baseball, including Phil Hughes, who would pitch for the Yankees in the World Series in 2009. Another local kid, Brad Boxberger, also would become an MLB pitcher, for the Tampa Bay Rays a few years later.

Mark’s high school team, the Villa Park Spartans, is a Southern California powerhouse in baseball, and so is the local university, Cal State Fullerton. That city is next to Anaheim, home of the major league Angels.

Mark started playing Little League T-ball as a second-grader at Linda Vista Elementary School. He wanted to be a pitcher. He and his dad, Grant, spent a lot of warm evenings watching major leaguers play at Angel Stadium. Some nights, they could feel the thunder of fireworks going off from Disneyland nearby, lighting up the sky.

When Mark was little, the star pitchers for the Angels were left-handers, and Mark threw right-handed. But Mark was also a good hitter, so at first, his favorite Angel was an outfielder, slugger Tim Salmon.

In 1998, Angel Stadium added a rock formation with a waterfall behind the wall in left centerfield. Sitting in the stands, watching his team, Mark would imagine what it was like to be Tim Salmon, standing at the plate, waiting for a pitch he could knock into the rocks for a home run.

In 2002, when Mark was in high school, the Angels won the World Series behind the pitching of another favorite player, John Lackey. He was a tall, lanky, right-hander. By then, Mark, too, was a tall, right-handed pitcher. He, too, stared down high-school hitters from the mound, just like Lackey.

Mark’s best friends were Kurt Gottschling and Dane Ferguson. Mark met Kurt playing T-ball when he was 6. He already knew Dane, whom he met a couple of years earlier, according to Mark and his dad, while they were out walking their dog.

“We were 4 or so, and he followed us home,” Mark remembers. “My dad noticed after a while there was this kid who was too young to really know what he’s doing, so we turned around and walked him back to his house.”

Mark played baseball with and against both of them through Little League, and they all played on the same high school team. Today, they are men in their 30s, and they are still close friends.

Both Kurt and Dane say Mark was the best kid baseball player they ever saw. When other kids were struggling just to hit the ball off the tee, Mark was making solid contact, as if he were born to swing a bat. Even as a 7-year-old, Mark got noticed by adults.

Like other places, coaches for teams in the Villa Park Little League were mostly dads of the players. At the beginning of each season, team coaches would take turns choosing names from a list of kids who had signed up in each age group until everybody had a full team, and there were no more names. The process was similar to how professional teams choose players — that process is called a draft.

Mark was so good that all the Little League coaches wanted to draft him for their team. According to Grant, one season, when he was still in elementary school, Mark’s coach from the year before told his new coach, “‘If you don’t release Mark so I can draft him, I’m going to draft your son to play for me.’”

No coach wants his kid playing for another team. That’s how Mark ended up playing for the same team two years in a row.

By the time he was in third grade, Mark told his teacher, Brandi Aarvig, that he was going to grow up and play for the California Angels. (The team changed its name a few years ago, and now is called the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.)

Mark started playing T-ball about the same time he learned to read.

SOURCE: TRUMBO FAMILY

But he wasn’t boasting, he was just stating the truth. In fact, Mark talked very little. He was a shy kid who was more likely to talk about a bad play he made than brag about the home run he just hit.

Recently, Ms. Aarvig remembered what other kids in the class would say when she asked them, “Who are you going to play today?”

“‘We’re playing Mark’s team,’” she remembers them saying. “‘We’re not going to win.’”